I first bought the DayZ Standalone for $29.95 on steam. I had watched a lot of youtube videos of the game and it just looked like a ton of fun. The following is what happened after I bought the game and played it.

The first time I played DayZ I played for a few hours and in that time found a hat, a vest, and some other random worthless items such as seeds, etc. I ended up dying of either hunger or thirst because I couldn't find food or water anywhere. The next time that I spawned, a zombie killed me that glitched through a closed door while I was looting a building in Elecktro. I tried respawning again only it became dark and I couldn't see anything. I tried walking around to loot but it was just a completely lost cause. Mostly total darkness. Someone shot me and killed me. That would be the last time that I ever played DayZ in darkness. Going forward I would only play in daylight and if a server was dark I would just skip to a different server.

I put about five hours into game time before I found an actual gun. While messing with my menus I actually dropped the gun on accident while standing on a rooftop. I went to pick the gun back up and had the "no message received" message come on my screen, which I would later learn meant a server shutdown or reset. I was unable to pick the gun back up and never got it back.

It would take me 10 more hours of gameplay before I found another gun AND bullets that matched up with the gun I had found. Much to my disappointment, I could only chamber ONE BULLET in the gun because I didn't have a clip. I met another player online who helped me out and told me that I had to use servers with no players on them in order to find decent loot. I was tracking on steam how much time I had played the game. I enjoyed taking one shot at a time at zombies. If I missed I would run far away, reload my one bullet and try again.

It would be 20 hours of gameplay before I finally had a clip that matched my handgun. I had a fully loaded handgun! How exciting. It only took 20 hours to get here. I found a backpack and was starting to really gear up. I decided to try a server with a few players on it.

While walking through a town I saw a guy running down the road. I didn't think he saw me, so I hid in a church and sat on the side corner, waiting for him. I was ready to get my first kill. He walked right past me. I shot him at least five times point blank. He just turned and looked at me, as if he didn't feel the damage. He one shot killed me. I lost everything I had spent something like 20 hours collecting. Never got the gun, ammo or clip back again.

Something like 30 hours into playing the game, I just stopped playing and started playing Arma 3. I bought a few similar games such as "Miscreated" and "H1Z1". When I look at steam and see that 75% of people who own the standalone review it positively... I wonder if they played the same game I did. I still go back and play DayZ every now and then, to see how kind of updates are happening. I played the 0.58 update a while back. Had a session where I played for a few hours collecting loot. I accidentally fell into a swimming pool while running from some zombies. Couldn't climb out. I just swam around until I figured out how to glitch my way out of the pool.

The DayZ standalone is the ultimate example of a video game taking itself too seriously. Trying to hard to simulate realism, while simultaneously being the most unrealistic game I've ever played. As a big fan of the show "The Walking Dead"... I used to semi fantasize about how exciting it might be living in a zombie apocalypse world. DayZ reminded me that it's probably going to be long, boring and frustrating.